The Wizard Rock People’s Choice Awards

Wizrocklopedia recently announced that it is accepting nominations for the 2008 Wizard Rock People’s Choice Awards.

The nomination form needs to be completed by 11:59 PM EST on Thursday, April 30th (sorry not much time left I know). The final voting will begin on Monday, May 4th and should close on Friday, May 15th. It is anticipated that the winners will be announced on Thursday, May 20th at about midnight EST.

I will admit that I spent a very long time trying to decide on my nominations for the awards. Some of the categories I found impossible to fill in and some had so many candidates that I was torn as for who to choose, especially as I wanted to give everyone a fair hearing. I spent two whole days listening to nothing but Wrock in hopes that it would help – it didn’t. However, finally last night I submitted my nominations and below is my list of nominations. I’d just like to add that just because I didn’t vote for a band in any category doesn’t mean I don’t think they’re not brilliant – just that my heart told me to go with someone else.

Best Male Vocals: The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and The Mudbloods

Best Female Vocals: Split Seven Ways and The Butterbeer Experience

Best New Artist: Lost Diadems and Snake Like Snape

Best Full Length Album: Goodbye Privet Drive by Ministry of Magic and Nevermind the Furthermore by The Remus Lupins

Best EP: Valedictions by Split Seven Ways and A War Amidst Pop Songs by The Mudbloods

Best Album Art: Valedictions by Split Seven Ways and Goodbye Privet Drive by Ministry of Magic/Frak

Best Song: Crimson Beloved by The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and A Pensieve Full of Unrequited Love by The Mudbloods

Best Solo Artist: Split Seven Ways and Marked As His Equal

Best Duo: RiddleTM and Draco and the Malfoys

Best Group Effort: The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and Hawthorn and Holly

Best Band From Beyond The Grave: The Moaning Myrtles and Creevey Crisis

Best Band Featuring a Magical Creature: Witherwings and Buckbeak’s Flight

Best Hufflepuff Band: The Butterbeer Experience

Best Gryffindor Band: Gryffindor Common Room Rejects and Romilda Vane and the Chocolate Cauldrons

Best Slytherin Band: Draco and the Malfoys (obviously) and Split Seven Ways - there were really too many to choose from for this category!

Best Ravenclaw Band: Roger Davies

Best Non Hogwarts Band: The Whomping Willows and The Nifflers

Best Kept Secret Award: The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and Split Seven Ways - this was a HUGE problem as there were so many people I wanted to nominate like Peeved, Nagini etc.

Best Youth Effort: The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and Sirriusly Hazza P

Band of the Year: Split Seven Ways and RiddleTM - the hardest category for sure!

Best Music Video: Amortentia by Split Seven Ways and Save Ginny Weasley? by Peeved

Band Using the Most Exotic Instrument: The Blibbering Humdingers using a medieval krumhorn (thanks to their blog for informing me of this fact) and Split Seven Ways for the violin

Best Collaboration: The Burrow by The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and RiddleTM and Death Eater Tango by The Butterbeer Experience and Mark from Ministry of Magic

Best Dance Song: Occlumency Lessons by The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and The Bravest Man I Ever Knew by Ministry of Magic

Best Holiday Song: Draco's Christmas Wish by RiddleTM and Candle in the Window by Tonks and the Aurors

Best Comedy Song: The Year Harry Went Emo by Peeved and The Mandrake’s Lament by The Butterbeer Experience

Best Techno/Electronica Song: Occlumency Lessons by The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office and I Should by Malfoy Manor

Best Memorial Song: Ode To Those Who Died by The Butterbeer Experience and The Veil by RiddleTM

Best remixed Song: Ode to Voldemort by RiddleTM remixed by Peeved and Potions Yesterday by Draco and the Malfoys remixed by Ministry of Magic

Best Metawizard Song: Transparent by The Moaning Myrtles and This Is Never Going To End by The Parselmouths

International Awards: Split Seven Ways and RiddleTM - this was such a hard one too – I wanted to nominate every band I’ve heard!

Okay, so I said that I tried to be fair, and I really did but there does seem to be rather a large number of nominations for The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, Split Seven Ways and RiddleTM. I’m not ashamed of this. I think they are truly excellent bands who deserve the recognition that they might not receive being ‘international’ bands rather than the rather better known US bands like Harry and the Potters et al.

So those were my choices – good or bad, biased or not. It really was hard to cut down the nominations to two in each category and it will be interesting to see if any of them make it to the final nominations.

Roll on May 4th!

The Wizrocklopedia

The Wizrocklopedia is an excellent source of news and information for anyone interested in Wizard Rock. Featuring articles, news, updates and competitions amongst other things it is every Wrockers first port of call for information. Click on the link above or in the favourite Wizard Rock Places in the sidebar to visit the site.

Introduction

Welcome to my latest blog. This one, as you’ll have gathered from the give-away title is all to do with Wizard Rock – the Harry Potter fandom genre of music. The Harry Potter fandom was the first to create a whole type of music dedicated to exploring the world that Jo Rowling had created (although now Twilight and Doctor Who and probably other genres too have their own music, some of which has been created by Wizard rockers). It is also the case that some very talented artists who began with Wizard Rock have now branched out into Muggle music.

Wizard rock is a huge and ever-growing genre of music, with a large variety of bands and musical styles. You can find everything from the polished and professional bands to the home-taped filk producers and everything in-between. I discovered this world pretty late in Wizard Rock terms – only about eighteen months ago – but in that time I have been fascinated and impressed at the talent that the genre has produced and, as with everywhere else in the HP fandom, the friendliness of everyone involved in the scene.

As I’m in no way musical and I haven’t yet been able to convince Mrs H3 to start a Wrock band – she’s the talented one after all (although I’m still working on it) my intention is to use this blog to promote greater awareness of Wizard Rock through my writing as I feel that more people outside the fandom should have the opportunity to investigate this music. I’m hoping that people will be interested enough to read the blog and then to check out the bands mentioned within. To do this I’ll be talking about the bands I love, new bands I’ve discovered, albums I’ve bought and oldies but goodies that should be on everyone’s listening lists. I’ll be including other sources of information and will possibly be writing reviews on albums and bands, along with any concerts or general wizard rock news that comes my way.

To be honest there are so many Wizard Rock bands around these days that I’ve not even heard of some of them. So if you have a band that you want me to check out, or have some music that you think I should be listening to or reviewing then please feel free to contact me either by e-mail or by leaving a message on here. I’m also interested in your opinions on the topics I cover and if you have any ideas for things I should be blogging about feel free to leave a message about those too.